No single social media company known today provides a platform for its average user to manage different types of relationships each user may have, with specific individuals and with society in general. The present invention is configured to provide various facilities, instrumentalities and methods that existing platforms do not provide to their members/users, and these include:
1. An environment where fluid relationships can evolve and grow deeper over time (referred to hereinafter as “the Depth Factor”). Most of the time when two people meet, they start as acquaintances, which status may stay that way for many years. Alternatively, they may become friends after a few months and progress to becoming best of friends. The relationship may deepen and they may get married and have children. On a different track, they may become involved in professional relationships such as becoming co-workers, or one becoming an employee of or reporting to the other. In some instances they may decide to undertake a business venture, e.g., together or with people of business, legal or medical backgrounds. One could become a patient or client of the other or one might want to purchase goods or services from the other. They may become vendors, lenders, customers, consultants, insurers, shareholders, directors, executives, staff members, etc., of each other. Businesses take similar paths with their vendors, lenders, customers, consultants, insurers, shareholders, directors, executives, staff members and so forth;
2. An environment that provides a greater sense of security and privacy of certain information, which users need before willing to share sensitive information (hereinafter referred to as “the Security Factor”). Present social media companies store and, therefore, have complete control of their users' private content, i.e., emails, photos, chats, documents, and all confidential data, including financial data, medical data, resumes, user's contact data; clients/contacts contact data, web searches, private content: credit report, DNA, text, photo, audio, video data, social media content, i.e., chats, web searches and shopping. At times, these contents may be too sensitive for any company to store or have access to, regardless of the company's size or its policies. Furthermore, it is possible that a user's content may be accessed without knowledge of the user by the social medial company or by one of its employees which, in general, diminishes or undermines user confidence;
3. An environment where users can cooperate and act as a group by developing a procurement list and so save money when buying goods or services from suppliers. Or, users may utilize the list to get competing bids from suppliers or service/care providers (hereinafter referred to as “the Efficiency Factor”);
4. An environment that provides a better experience by using and providing the most up to date, technologically developed facilities (hereinafter referred to as the “Enhanced User Experience Factor”);
5. An environment that includes checks and balances, involving disclosing to each other various credential information; as more fully explained below (hereinafter referred to as “the Checks and Balances Factor”); and
6. An environment that better quantifies users' participation and activities and which provides certain incentives, for example:                a. Users can collect incentives for the time spent online; and        b. Advertisers can make decisions on how to spend their dollars effectively by profiling and targeting users for different advertisements (hereinafter referred to as “the User Dashboard Factor”).        